


One Candle

by deedeeinfj



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedeeinfj/pseuds/deedeeinfj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Perhaps we could allow ourselves just one candle." Takes off from the end of "Away with the Fairies."</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Candle

Phryne waited in the kitchen and listened to the voices in her foyer.

"Good evening, Inspector. May I take your hat and coat?" Mr. Butler asked.

"Ah - yes. Thank you, Mr. Butler," replied the deep, resonant voice of Jack Robinson.

"Miss Fisher will be right with you."

A moment later, Mr. Butler returned to the kitchen, and Phryne, after flashing that excellent man a grin, strode through the dining room to meet Jack. Her inspector didn't know that he had been invited for dinner instead of their usual drinks. And it was a dinner that was meant only for him this time.

"Jack," she greeted him, extending her hand.

They hadn't shaken hands since the day they met, and she would allow him to interpret it any way he liked: the safe welcome of a friend (and nothing more) or meeting again as something different, something more. Whatever he thought of it, it was guarded behind a small, uncertain smile as he took her hand. He looked especially handsome in his dark suit and blue tie.

"Good of you to come," she said. She turned and motioned for him to enter the room.

He took a step in. "And what puzzle are we solving tonight?"

"No puzzle," she said softly as he stopped in the doorway and slid his hands into his pockets. Then again, it _was_ a puzzle, wasn't it, this thing between them?

He nodded, and she watched him walk past her. She imagined that she could hear his detective's brain working, absorbing the fact that this was for him. That he was the expected and wanted guest.

"And no candlelight," he observed. He reached the head of the table and turned so that he faced her again. "No chopsticks, either."

"There won't be any chopsticks at this table for quite some time," she informed him, pulling out her chair.

"And how would Mr. Lin feel about that?" Jack asked as he took his own seat.

"Mr. Lin will have quite enough to worry about with his Communist revolutionary fighter bride."

"Really?" Jack fidgeted with the edges of the dish set before him. He glanced at the unlit candles. A hint of a smile teased at his mouth. "Pass on my congratulations."

Her intention this evening was to ascertain beyond any doubt whether Jack Robinson wanted to be her lover. He was attracted to her; she knew that. But was that an impulse he wanted to indulge or to keep at bay? The question had seemed settled when he told her of his estranged wife, but after his kiss at Cafe Replique - all in the line of duty or not - she wasn't so sure. She had tasted hunger and passion in that beautiful, expressive mouth of his, and she would by no means object to feeling it on every inch of her. She was past teasing him about blushes and furrows in his brow and wooing for information.

"Perhaps we could allow ourselves just one candle," she suggested, gauging him. "What do you think?"

Her eyes flitted to the candles and back to him, and he cast the same glance before looking back at her.

"I think I could cope with that," he said.

Watching him, she set her lighter to the wick of the center candle. He smiled at her, open and warm, and she was struck (not at all for the first time) by how much she liked him. "Strictly business," she had told Lin about herself and Jack, but that wasn't true. Even if they were never to be anything more than friends and partners, she cared about him deeply.

"Now, Jack," she said as Mr. Butler entered to serve the first course, "since you're the one who has studied the subject, how does one defeat a monitor lizard?"

"Your garden variety goannas or the malevolent monitors?"

"The malevolent ones, of course."

He shook his head, his face grave. "Lost cause without blue fairies on your side."

"And who says I don't have fairies of every hue on my side?"

"From all I've seen, you fight your own battles, Miss Fisher."

Satisfied with his answer, she let him eat.

"Well done on the cyanide capsule," she told him as they rehashed the details of the case over the main course. "And the ferrocyanide, come to think of it, though you wanted to pin the whole thing on my dear friend at that time."

He raised an eyebrow. "You were the one who brought up the prints. You would have told me about them yourself if I hadn't known."

"Even so," she said. "You are frightfully clever, you know."

She almost winced as the words left her mouth; had that sounded like inane, flirtacious flattery? But Jack's face told her that he had received it as the sincere compliment it was.

"Somehow always a few steps behind you, though," he said with that familiar quirk of his head.

"I'm a fast walker."

Later, after Mr. Butler had left them with the dessert and sherry, Phryne pushed forward.

"I want to talk about what happened the other night," she said. His jaw clenched hard, and she could see immediately that the walls were flying up around him. She leaned forward and touched his arm. "I'm not teasing you, Jack."

"What is there to talk about?" he asked, his voice even more low-pitched than usual. "I already told you--"

"The line of duty, yes. But that kiss..." Unable to help herself, she glanced down at his lips. "Jack, that was a real kiss." Her eyes found his again. "It was a good kiss." He said nothing, his face utterly inscrutable. "Shall we call it a diversion and go on as if it never happened? Is that what you want? Or..." She trailed off and waited.

"What I want, Phryne, isn't really the question," he said at last. His stony expression had softened, and his eyes, steadfast on hers, held everything he wanted to say and couldn't, as clearly as text on a page.

She nodded. "I understand you, and this is the last I'll say about it. And you didn't take a liberty." When he looked at her in confusion, she went on in her most business-like tone, "You said before that you were sorry if you had taken a liberty. No apology necessary. It had to be done."

"Thank you."

"Jack?" she said quietly after a moment. "It would never be a liberty." This time it was she who spoke with her eyes, and he who understood.

Phryne was not a woman who waited to be kissed, but she vowed to herself that nothing would compel her to kiss Jack Robinson unless he did it himself. The line was his to cross, and when he did, she would be waiting on the other side. Until then, she would solve murders with him and have one-candle dinners and nightcaps with him and tempt him and tease him as much as her heart desired.

When she saw him out that evening, he paused just outside, locked eyes with her, and said only, "It was."

She closed the door with a smile.


End file.
